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Comment by okareaman | Hacker News Reader

As a retired person, I used to enjoy driving for Lyft and Uber. I took a break during the worst of the pandemic. My car is no longer functional, so I expected to start driving again with a rental car, which a lot of people were doing before the pandemic. Lyft and Uber ignored me for a year despite my high rating, while they had driver shortages. Finally, Lyft reached out and qualified me to drive with a rental car. However, the suggested rental car options were all at normal rates, which means I'd have to drive 25 hours a week to pay for the rental car and more to pay for insurance. Totally not worth risking my life for.

Now I'm looking for ways to make money off the failure of these companies ("brain dead" as Steve Jobs would say)

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Rental car companies don't have enough cars for their normal customers, I doubt they're in a hurry to rent them out at a discount for rideshare drivers.

It's not that Lyft is brain dead, they aren't a car manufacturer and they can't wave their hands and make more cars available. Even car manufacturers can't make enough cars available.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2021/07/16/rental-car-...

>Now I'm looking for ways to make money off the failure of these companies

short them and/or buy puts. it's risky though. the market can remain irrational longer than you can involve solvent, and as the recent meme stocks have shown, the market can be very irrational.

Shorting even an obvious piece of shit like Lyft is risky in this environment. We're talking about a company that has never earned a profit, has no prospects of ever making a profit, has a huge and rapidly accelerating annual loss on shrinking revenues, the share price of which has doubled in the past year (up 5% today alone). You're going head-to-head with all the lunatics in the world.

Nikola Motors is another obvious PoS that has had significant retracements up and down in share price for not any particularly sound fundamental reasons. I've been short it since the Hindenburg Research post came out and have made money, but it's been nail-biting at times.

I think buying puts is too expensive given that you've got to get the timing just right (and your upside is capped) and shorting Uber/Lyft is too fraught with "as the COVID recovery story changes good and bad, transportation companies are going to whipsaw some".

Bet with the macro trend, not against it.

That would be called betting against the fed. Excess liquidity trumps subpar fundamentals.

I am not a particularly financially savvy person, but I can learn. I found this thread about shorting Uber in 2019 that seems more compelling today:

Is Uber the perfect short? https://old.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/br6hl1/is_uber_the_...

Shorting stocks is always risky. Taking stock picking advise from anonymous people on the internet is a bad idea in general unless you don't care if you lose money.

Keep in mind, you’re retired. Shorts have infinite risk.

> so I expected to start driving again with a rental car

That's on you, then, for not understanding current market conditions.

The used car market right now is insane and rental agencies bounced off bankruptcies if they didn't actually go bankrupt.

All this means that renting a car is going to be quite expensive. I'd be surprised if anyone can make a profit doing rideshare with one.

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